When the group started, the boyfriends, then also in the band, were
usually falsely credited with the success of the group because, you
know, women don't know anything.

When the boyfriends left and Ann and Nancy continued the band, it was a
shock to some that the band continued, let alone thrived.

Ann is the front person. She and Nancy often write the songs (frequently with childhood friend Sue Ennis).

Had they been men, no one would have ever questioned their talent, their leadership or their ability to rock.

Their hits are legendary: "Magic Man," "Crazy On You, " "Dreamboat
Annie," "Dog & Butterfly," "Barracuda," "Tell It Like It Is,"
"Straight On," "Never," "Even It Up," "What About Love," "Nothing At
All," "These Dreams," "Alone," "How Can I Refuse," "This Man Is Mine,"
"Who Will You Run To," "There's The Girl," "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love
To You," "Wild Child," "I Didn't Want To Need You," "Stranged," "You're
The Voice," "Black On Black II," "Will You Be There (In The Morning)"
and more.

With Red Velvet Car, they had another hit album and reminded everyone that Heart is one of the supreme rock bands working today.

So I'm reading this article about how Joan Jett needs to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I disagree.

She's the Monkees, she's not an artist.

Her contributions have been nonexistent.

"I Love Rock And Roll"? She didn't write the song, she didn't choose to sing it, the man who produced the album made her sing it.

And that's all she's really got.

There are many women who belong in the Hall, Joan's not one of them.

I'd induct Cher, Carly Simon, Joan Armatrading and a host of others well before the pre-packaged Joan Jett, rock and roll cartoon.

But I wouldn't be noting this if it wasn't for the comment left on the article:

Wednesday, October 1, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, Barack's
'plan' continues to falter, Barack steps away from fears of civilian
casualties from US bombings, monthly totals for Septembers dead and
wounded are released, Antiwar.com does a better job of counting the dead
than does the United Nations, England joins in bombing Iraq, Senator
Patty Murray works to address the issue of homeless veterans, TRICARE is
failing some military families in the US, and much more.

We're going to start with veterans by noting this press release from Senator Patty Murray's office:

(Washington, D.C.) –
Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Housing
Appropriations Subcommittee and senior member of the Senate Veterans’
Affairs Committee, announced new resources to help homeless veterans
secure stable housing. Washington state will receive 335 housing
vouchers that will be allocated to eleven different
housing authorities across the state- this includes both tenant-based
vouchers, which are used to cover rent in private housing, as well as
project-based vouchers, which are attached to specific units of housing.

The
vouchers are part of the joint Department of Housing and Urban
Development and Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program (HUD-VASH
program),
a program Murray helped restart in 2008 and which she has continued to fund every year since. Through the program, homeless veterans receive vouchers through HUD and case management and services through the VA.

“These vouchers are a huge boost in the effort to end homelessness among veterans in our state,”said Senator Murray.“Each one of these vouchers
represents a step toward finding a permanent home for someone who
sacrificed for our nation, but is struggling to find stable housing. The
HUD-VASH program provides critical support to these veterans and is a
key reason why we
are making real progress toward the goal of finally ending veteran
homelessness.”

Senator Murray works tirelessly for veterans and deserves much praise for that.

However, if there were 19 clones of her and the original serving in the Senate, it still wouldn't be enough.

TRICARE.

I am hearing the same story over and over from veterans and their spouses with children.

TRICARE is supposed to be coverage for service members and for veterans
-- there's TRICARE for retired, etc. Think of it as Blue Cross Blue
Shield if you need to simplify it.

John and Joan are married and have a daughter named Jill.

John is not oversees, he's a service member but he gets stationed here
and there. They do a seven month stint in Colorado. Five months in,
Jill is vomiting and can't stop. She's taken to the emergency room of
the local hospital where they stabilize her. Jill is taken to a
doctor's office or clinic the next day and Dr. Michelle Wong says Jill
needs to see a specialist, Dr. Andre Kumar.

I hope everyone's following example, it's pretty straight forward.

En route to Dr. Kumar's office, or after being seen, John and Joan are
informed that the visit isn't 'authorized' so TRICARE won't be covering
it.

I've heard this basic story over and over in the last four weeks when speaking to veterans groups.

TRICARE wants a PCP -- a primary care physician. That would be your
family doctor, the doctor you or your children see when you're sick.

John and Joan are not living in X and never moving. The military wants
them at this base for a limited time and then at that base. And if
there's no reason to change the PCP -- if the child isn't sick or can be
treated in a clinic, for example -- the parents don't change the PCP.
Sometimes TRICARE does.

So when their child does get sick and they seek care, they're suddenly
faced with costs and expenses they shouldn't have to deal with. But
TRICARE says their sick child can't see that specialist -- even if a
doctor has made the referral -- because they didn't see their PCP.

I've tried to keep the above simple (there's also an issue of TRICARE assigning PCP's to relocated families).

TRICARE could keep things real simple by allowing service members and
their families to see a specialist if they are referred by another
doctor -- it should not have to be a PCP.

It is ridiculous.

Joan and John and Jill are not moving because they made the decision,
they're moving because the US government is changing where they are
stationed. TRICARE needs to recognize that.

No service member should have to worry about the costs of caring for
their children -- that's especially true when your child is in dire need
of a specialist.

I've tried to keep the above simple. I've used PCP because that's what
most people are familiar with -- most with insurance -- but, for
example, in TRICARE, the PCP is called the PCM.

Calling. The other big issue.

As someone who has sat in one hearing after another where members of
Congress like Patty Murray, Senator Richard Burr, Senator Bernie
Sanders, US House Rep Jeff Miller and US House Rep Mike Michaud have
repeatedly asked the VA if they need more money for employees or
training or this or that and heard the VA say no?

Will someone ask the VA, someone in Congress, how they feel about their
call center because veterans with health issues -- such as the example
above -- are getting real tired of the weight.

Moving to another topic . . .

Ned Parker's made his mark and then some reporting from Iraq. His time at the Los Angeles Times, for example, is noted for his breaking the news on the secret prisons tyrant Nouri al-Maliki ran. He nows heads Reuters' Iraq bureau. And he Tweeted the following:

To give credit where it's due, the byline for the Reuters report is Raheem Salman, Yara Bayoumy, Ned Parker and Philippa Fletcher.

And to point out that the 'correction' isn't one, let's note that BBC
added Reuters to the story, it did not issue a correction ("In a
previous version of this report, we wrongly . . .") or an apology.

Accidents do happen, mistakes as well. If you can't acknowledge them,
that says something about you -- something much worse than an
inadvertent failure to give credit.

In other image problems . . .

If you were looking at approximately two more years in office, you might
try to use them to improve your image -- especially if you had six bad
years so far and your second term was marked only by how increasingly
unpopular you were.

You might look to improve your image.

US President Barack Obama apparently doesn't. Igor Bobic (Huffington Post) reports:The Obama administration has exempted its current military campaign in Syria and Iraq from strict standards imposed last year aimed at preventing civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes, Yahoo News reported Tuesday.The
White House intended the standard of "near certainty" that civilians
wouldn't be killed to apply "only when we take direct action 'outside
areas of active hostilities,' as we noted at the time," Caitlin Hayden, a
spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told Yahoo. "That
description -- outside areas of active hostilities -- simply does not
fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now."

Huffington Post reported, AP rushes to excuse. Associated Press' Ken Dilanian offers:According to the White House,
the reason the near-certainty standard is not applicable turns on a
fine point of international law — the theory that the U.S. is not
involved in “active hostilities” in Yemen and Somalia, but is in Syria
and Iraq. Such distinctions are controversial, given the frequency with
which American bombs and bullets have flown in both countries.A
more practical reason is that the self-imposed rules on drone strikes
against al-Qaida are simply too restrictive for a conventional military
air campaign against the Islamic State group, which the U.S. says is
both a terrorist group and an occupying army, and has ordered the
Pentagon to destroy.

Last Friday, NINA reported a Mosul bombing by US war planes killed 4 civilians. In another article, Dilanian offers, "In Iraq, the U.S. is relying for ground reports on the Iraqi military
and intelligence services, whose insights into Islamic State-controlled
territory are limited."

Then maybe they shouldn't be bombing?

And did Barack miss this reality before he started bombing because so
many people were discussing this publicly before the first air strikes
started -- Time magazine's Bobby Ghosh, for example, was on MSNBC talking about just this possibility.

Did he miss that reality or does he just not care?

Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) notes the dropping of the previously announced standard and offers:The more fast-and-loose definition of care may mirror the US
occupation of Afghanistan, where airstrikes have routinely killed large
numbers of civilians, and incidents of scores and even hundreds of civilians slain in botched strikes are not unheard of.It also makes the weekend admonition by the Red Cross for the US to
take care that it abides by international bans against targeting
civilians and medical personnel all the more important, as their
checkered track record of doing that in past wars seems to be the
template they’re applying to the new conflict.

Baghdad, 1 October 2014 – According to casualty figures released
today by UNAMI, a total of at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed and another
1,946 were injured in acts of terrorism and violence in September*.

The number of civilians killed was 854 (including 79 civilian
police), while the number of civilians injured was 1,604 (including 84
civilian police). A further 265 members of the Iraqi Security Forces
were killed, and 342 were injured (including Peshmerga, SWAT and
militias fighting alongside Iraqi Army/not including casualties from
Anbar operation). *CAVEATS: Data do not take into account casualties
of the current IA operation in Anbar, for which UNAMI was unable to
obtain figures for the reporting period. In general, UNAMI has been
hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. In some
cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has
also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of
casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from
secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to
exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health
care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as
the absolute minimum. Civilian Casualties (killed and injured) per governorate Anbar excluded, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 1,335
civilian casualties (352 killed, 983 injured), followed by Salahadin
(298 killed, 383 injured), Kirkuk (59 killed, 51 injured), Diyala (36
killed, 71 injured), Nineveh (75 killed, 16 injured). Operations in Anbar Up to now, UNAMI has not been able to obtain the total civilian
casualty figures from the Health Directorate in Anbar. Overall casualty
figures for Anbar will be added if and when they become available.

Anbar is a province where a lot of violence takes place so you don't
have a real count if you're leaving out Anbar. There's also the nonsens
of 'civilian' casualties -- dead is dead.

The UN News Centre notes, "At least 1,119 Iraqis – most of them civilians – were killed in [September],
the United Nations in the country today reported, but cautioned that the
figure does not include people killed in the ongoing operation in
Anbar, or those who died from the heat or hunger after being forced to
flee violence in their cities."

So they do keep a tally of security forces killed.

Who's is missing?

How about the dead accused of being 'terrorists'?

Why is the UN going along with that?

I seem to remember when a group of US forces broke into an Iraqi home,
murdered the parents and a five-year-old girl while gang-raping an Iraqi
teenager in the other room before killing her too. And who did the
press blame?

'Terrorists.'

In terms of the dead last month, there's no need to determine who is or
isn't a terrorist, you just count the dead. Dead is dead. The press
has no idea whether some person the Iraqi forces killed is a terrorist
or not but they do know the person is dead.

Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) reports, "Antiwar.com has determined that at least 3,790 people were killed across
Iraq during September. These numbers include militants, even foreign ones, killed
in Iraq. Another 1,949 were wounded. The violence also left 126 dead
and 184 wounded across Iraq on Tuesday." That's the standard the United Nations should be pursuing.

And let's further note that the UN's refusal to count Anbar's deaths really harms the United Nation's credibility.

In other news, Chelsea J. Carter, Gul Tuysuz and Ben Wedeman (CNN) add
"that the United Kingdom said it conducted its first airstrikes against
ISIS in Iraq, striking targets four days after Parliament voted to
approve the country's involvement." Those bombings were late last
night. For those scratching their heads and thinking, "Wait, didn't . .
." Yes. Yes, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was telling/scolding
the press yesterday that the RAF would not be "panicked" into bombing but would instead gather intel and then move cautiously and safely and blah, blah, blah.

Cameron said, “This is going to be a mission that will take not just months but years.”

To their shame most Labour MPs lined up to back the Tories’ new war.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said bombing Iraq was about “protecting our
national interest, security and the values for which we stand.”

After the vote Rushanara Ali, Labour
MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, resigned as shadow
education minister over Labour’s support for the air strikes.

Labour MP and chair of the Stop the War Coalition (StW) Jeremy Corbyn refused to vote for the motion.

He spoke to Socialist Worker on the eve of the vote as StW protesters gathered outside Downing Street in London.

Corbyn said, “This is the third time I’ve been asked to bomb Iraq and the third time I’ll say no.”

He pointed to the West’s hypocrisy. “They are joining with Saudi
Arabia which frequently beheads opponents of its regime to stop Isis
which beheads the opponents of its regime,” he said.

Like Saudi Arabia the West’s other allies in the bombing—Bahrain,
Jordan, Qatar and UAE—are dictatorships that suppressed democracy
movements during the Arab Spring.

MPs congratulated themselves on what many declared was a serious
debate. They acknowledged the shadow cast by the last war on Iraq. But
in speech after speech MPs claimed that somehow this war would be
different.

The vote was on a motion to bomb Iraq, but many MPs were already
pushing to extend air strikes to Syria. Cameron asserted that he could
legally extend action without a new vote.

Even Miliband did not rule out spreading the attack to Syria, only
saying it would be “better” if there was a United Nations resolution to
justify such action.

Several MPs also refused to rule out putting troops on the ground.

Iraqi socialist Sami Ramadani told Socialist Worker, “They failed to
win a vote to bomb Syria last year because of opposition to war.

“Now they want to justify this new war with all the talk of tackling savagery of Isis.”

“But this is a chance for the US and the West to reassert itself in the region,” said Sami.

Activists across Britain need to get out on to the streets and
challenge the warmongers’ lies and the threat of increased Islamophobia
they whip up.